


Disenfranchised Grief

by Neyiea



Series: misfit(toy)s [7]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 09:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19002973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: “Grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned”.- Ken Doka





	Disenfranchised Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, my sweet AU, I have returned to thee.

Last night Bruce had dreamt about a little boy with red hair and a redder, blistering mouth. Every other detail had faded upon his awakening, but he’d still been left in a cold sweat with a terrible guilt gnawing at him.

It’s been a week and a half since Jerome died, since he slipped out of Bruce’s inadequate hands, and as far as he knows there aren’t any plans for a burial yet. The idea of his body being kept in a morgue indefinitely is unsettling for some reason. Maybe because all Bruce wants is for his spirit to finally be at rest. It’s not necessarily that he believes in ghosts, but if anyone was going to turn into a poltergeist after they died it would be Jerome.

He’d told Bruce that he would be watching, after all.

Bruce is too haunted by his own memories, his own failures, to deal with even the idea of Jerome lingering, unable to find peace even in death. 

It makes him wonder what had happened to Jerome’s spirit during the year of his first death.

Had he been watching then, too?

Yesterday he’d been down at the precinct to talk to Lucius about possible additions to his ‘rock climbing’ gear—Jerome’s allies were still at large, and he’d said that he was leaving behind a legacy—and he’d tried to ask Detective Gordon if he knew anything about when the body would be released. Gordon had seemed surprised that he’d wanted to initiate any sort of conversation regarding Jerome, and he had looked strangely apprehensive as he told Bruce that there was still too much chaos being caused by Jerome’s followers to say when it would be safe to do anything. 

Bruce can sort of understand the hesitation Gordon might have felt when it came to giving him any details. He was probably one of the few law-abiding people in the city who, like Bruce, hadn’t wanted Jerome to fall, and he probably thought that sheltering Bruce from too many facts about a death that had obviously taken an emotional toll on him would be for the best. 

It makes him feel nervous instead, as if the longer Jerome’s body isn’t laid to rest the more likely it is to fall into the hands of the remnants of Indian Hill, or his Maniax.

Perhaps that was why he’d dreamt of him.

His hands are sore, as if he’d been clenching them during the night, and when he looks at his palms he can see the imprints of his nails left behind. With so much of his dream having vanished like smoke he’s not sure if what he had been desperately clutching at during his sleep had been Jerome’s hands…

Or if it had been Zachary Trumble’s throat. 

Bruce lets out a shuddering exhale and tries to let the last piece of the dream fade away.

Today he’s going to show Jeremiah around the lab and sort out the ID passes for his security clearance, and he needs to at least look and act as if he’s put together.

It’s remarkable how someone so intelligent had stayed off of the radar for so long, though Bruce supposes that Jeremiah had put so much effort into staying hidden away from Jerome that he hadn’t wanted to bring extra attention to himself by showcasing the full extent of his potential. Jeremiah’s generators could change the whole world, and Jeremiah…

He’s clever, and patient, and on occasion almost painfully timid and secretive. That’s how he’s lived his life for fifteen years, trying to pass by unnoticed, so when he sometimes can’t seem to look Bruce in the eye Bruce doesn’t take it personally.

He thinks that Jeremiah is warming up to him though. He’s easy to talk to, and so long as Bruce steers the conversation to something that he’s enthusiastic about Jeremiah will go on and on without prompting. Labyrinths and clean energy. Architecture and engineering. 

It’s nice to listen to someone speak so passionately about the things that interest them.

Bruce wonders, if he’d stayed in school, if he would have eventually made friends that he could have spoken with about his interests so frankly. Not that he has many normal interests for someone his age. Being passionate about vigilantism, body armor, and gadgets isn’t exactly something that he wants to be known for…

But clean energy that, once it was developed, could be run off of less than the interest that his parents’ money made in a day? It was a way to bring Gotham forward, a way to help its most impoverished populations, a way to turn his city into a place where people felt like they could afford to hope for better things to come and not always have to prepare for the worst…

He can become passionate about that.

The phantom of the dream slips to the back of his mind, faded but not forgotten as Bruce prepares for the day ahead, and he tries to keep any lingering unease deep beneath the surface as he goes down to meet Alfred for breakfast. 

Bruce can tell that Alfred’s been worrying about him lately, and it’s not only because he’s begun spending stretches of time with someone who shares the last name of a person who had tried to kill him on multiple occasions. Bruce, already a little more introverted by nature than most of his peers, has been quieter as of late. Alfred has picked up on it and he tries, in his own little ways, to show Bruce that he’s there to lend an ear if Bruce ever needs to talk.

Bruce had hardly spoken to anyone about the death of his parents, but to speak to someone about the death of Jerome seems… Well, it seems like a bad idea to even attempt it. Jerome was a madman and a murderer, and he’d brought chaos and darkness to Gotham more than once. His first death had hardly effected Bruce on a personal level, but his second death... What Bruce feels, now that he’s gone, is something that he isn’t sure he can share. 

A grief felt when a loss occurs that cannot be openly acknowledged, or publicly mourned. 

A loss of life was a terrible thing, and Bruce finds himself mourning in his own way for a man who he’d once, however briefly, considered killing. It would be easier, he thinks, to let go of what he feels if he’d only ever had confrontations with Jerome that could be summarized by death being threatened upon him. The way Jerome had spoken to him while they were up on stage, and even as Bruce was urgently holding onto him, was tinged with a peculiar familiarity that somehow hadn’t felt completely unfitting. 

He thinks that Jerome would find this situation funny. He thinks that Jerome would be pleased to know that, even in death, Bruce can’t quite escape his pull.

Jerome’s followers have been grieving the only way they know how; by wreaking havoc in his name and graffitiing his eyes and laugh all over the buildings around Gotham. Bruce cannot deal with his complicated emotions with the same openness. Or maybe any openness. 

Although…

He remembers the sight of Jeremiah moving his glasses to rub at his face before walking away from his twin’s body. Remembers that, as they had spoken, his eyes appeared glassy. Jeremiah and Jerome might have been close, once, before they’d been drawn in different directions.

Perhaps he is not the only one silently wading through a grief that he doesn’t fully understand. Maybe he doesn’t have to face his complicated feelings alone.

The thought is… Soothing.

A knot of tension inside of him loosens. 

“Are you ready for the day ahead, Master B?” Alfred asks as he slides a full plate across the kitchen table, watchful eyes tracking the movement of Bruce’s hands as he picks up his utensils.

His appetite hasn’t been great, lately. Alfred seems to be trying to rectify that by piling more food onto him than usual, knowing how much Bruce hates having things go to waste.

“I think I am,” Bruce responds lightly as he spreads marmalade on his toast. “I hope that I’m not pushing Jeremiah out of his comfort zone too soon by having him come look at the lab already. He’s been hiding away for so long.”

“Well, he’ll have you there to help him along,” Alfred’s taut shoulders relax a little once Bruce starts eating. “I can’t think of a better way to get him used to new spaces. He must know, after that terrible farce you both went through together, that he’s safe with you.” 

“I hope that he does.”

Alfred’s expression goes soft, and he settles down into the chair across from Bruce. “Don’t sell yourself short, Master B. How could he not?”

Bruce allows himself a small smile, and the one he gets in return is three times as wide.

“Will you be requiring a ride today?”

“No, I’ll drive myself. Thank you, Alfred. And…” Bruce’s eyes drift down briefly. “Thank you for everything else, too. I know I’ve not been quite myself. I’ve been sorting through some things.”

“I understand, Bruce. You’ve had a rough time, and I know that it’s not always easy for you to talk about what’s going on in that head of yours.” Alfred leans forward, resting one hand overtop of Bruce’s. “But I’m always going to be here should you need me, and you’re moving on to better and brighter things, now.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

Better and brighter things, leading to a better and brighter Gotham.

He’s finally reaching the upward trend of his life, it seems. 

After breakfast Alfred escorts him to the garage and before Bruce can even open the car door Alfred straightens out the navy blazer that Bruce had picked out for himself, and he looks at Bruce with a paternal sort of pride in his eyes. Perhaps he’s just as happy as Bruce is that he’s made a friend that isn’t so deeply involved in Gotham’s numerous plots and schemes.

“Try not to take the corners too sharply, Master B, for the sake of your new friend’s poor heart.”

Bruce can’t stop the soft laugh that escapes him. “I’ll try not to scare him off.”

He gets into the car, waves goodbye through the window, and then he’s off.

The drive to the bunker is slowly becoming familiar, and Bruce finds that he can anticipate turns by landmarks instead of street names, and something about that seems blessedly mundane. Like a simple act of going over to a friend’s house and knowing the way so well that you felt like you could walk there blindfolded. 

Perhaps he needs more ordinary routine in his life, he finds himself thinking as he parks next to the familiar discreet building that leads into something far more fantastic than one would expect. 

Jeremiah must have been waiting right by his front door because he steps out almost as soon as Bruce knocks. It makes Bruce hopeful that Jeremiah is just as excited as he is for the day ahead.

They exchange pleasant, simple small-talk as they get into the car, and Jeremiah keeps pushing his glasses up his nose in what seems to be a nervous habit. Perhaps he is still frightened of the world outside of his bunker, but Bruce is going to do all that he can to put him at ease.

He starts by initiating a conversation about hydroelectricity and, as expected, the longer Jeremiah talks about the kinetic power found in the flow of water the less nervous he appears.

The last time they’d been travelling together into the city, in the back of a police cruiser, couldn’t be more different than now.

The memory of that day pulls at something inside of Bruce, and he finds himself nervously hoping to start a different kind of conversation.

Here, alone, is the best place for him to try. He doesn’t want to start a discussion about Jerome when there will be people around who might attempt to listen in on clearly private conversations.

Bruce licks his dry lips, and Jeremiah’s impassioned lecture comes to a natural conclusion.

“So the river around Gotham wouldn’t be a particularly good source of power?”

“Well, hydroelectric stations are generally built on a sharp incline or waterfall. It’s not that it wouldn’t be completely impractical, but I would consider it less feasible than, say, solar panels in the city.”

Bruce looks up at the overcast sky, a common enough sight in Gotham, and chuckles.

Jeremiah seems to straighten in his seat a little, pleased with himself for causing such a reaction.

“And once my generators are up and running water power won’t be something that you’ll need to concern yourself with.” The passion in his voice is genuine and unconcealed. “I can’t wait for you to see what they can do.”

“I can’t wait either,” Bruce admits.

He makes a turn, and the rural area around them begins to fade away as they get closer to the heart of the city.

Bruce glances at Jeremiah from the corner of his eye, sitting so comfortably beside him and looking so at ease, and hopes that he doesn’t ruin it all.

“How have you been feeling, since—” Since Jerome demanded for us both to be on stage with him. Since he strapped bombs around both of our necks. Since he fell to his death. “Since our first meeting?” 

“… Well enough, I suppose,” Jeremiah answers carefully. “Why?”

Now Bruce feels like fidgeting, nervous about bringing it up but wanting to take a chance.

“You may not know this, but I’ve had more confrontations with Jerome than are public knowledge. It’s not that I knew him well, but I do have some experiences where he wasn’t trying to kill me...” 

He’s messing this up. He’s messing this up so bad. He can see the relaxed posture Jeremiah had adopted turn into something far more guarded.

“Which is irrelevant. Well, it’s relevant in that I share a few commonalities with you that maybe a lot of people don’t, and I—” He sighs. “I’m sorry. All I want to say is if you ever did want to talk about Jerome, but you thought that there was no one around who would be willing to listen, I would listen to you. You don’t have to keep your thoughts and emotions locked away.” He thinks that somewhere, someone is laughing at the irony of Bruce attempting to coax anyone into talking about their feelings. 

Jeremiah is silent for a long moment, and Bruce feels like sinking into his seat.

“Thank you for the offer,” Jeremiah starts, his eyes firmly affixed to his knees. “My feelings about Jerome are… Incredibly complicated.” His gaze flicks up. “I hope you understand, but I don’t really want to talk about him right now. Possibly not ever.”

“Of course,” Bruce agrees quickly. 

Jeremiah sends a small, grateful smile his way, and Bruce returns it.

Perhaps they are both meant to continue mourning in their own ways…

Still.

Bruce wishes that he had someone to talk to.


End file.
